FROM

If we want justice for animals, we have to first stop
undermining our efforts by repeating the mantra of failure we inherited from
our meat-eating culture that tells us “people just don’t care.” It’s been
used against many similar efforts to change prejudicial social norms. It
only serves to protect the dominant culture’s oppressive beliefs while
stifling efforts for positive change.

International animal liberation movement 269 Life, in fact, makes the act
of branding a central symbol of its fight to end animal oppression. In the
words of founder Sasha Boojor, “It’s a method that humanity invented to take
away an individual’s personality and identity. We believe that animal
activists who willingly subject themselves to branding undermine its
mainstream legitimacy.”

Felicity’s rescue

The recent news story of a dog in Kentucky named Felicity, who was found
tied to a post and branded with a profanity, sparked an outpouring of
empathy as well as outrage and indignation for the perpetrators. The local
Humane Society in Lexington has raised money from many donors in honor of
her rescue, and a vet even volunteered to perform plastic surgery to “cover
up” the profanity branded into her skin. HS also issued a $3500 reward to
those who led them to Felicity’s abuser.

Many are baffled at why someone would want to do this to a dog. And, yet,
as horrible as this is, it is not without precedent. In fact, branding has
been used routinely for centuries to identify both non human animals and
even human slaves.

Branding animals: the larger context

While the story of Felicity’s branding with a profanity is sad and shocking,
it shines a light on the fact that branding, and numerous other terribly
cruel and inhumane mutilations, are routinely practiced on billions of
farmed animals every year, on small and large farms alike. Most people
remain unaware (or choose to remain comfortably unaware) of these practices,
much less consider them “abuse,” yet the fact remains that consumers pay
farmers to subject animals to an unimaginable level of suffering to produce
the egg, dairy and meat products they demand. Not only are farmed animals
routinely branded, they are subjected to other painful bodily mutilations as
infants without anesthesia, including castration, dehorning, tail-docking
(cutting off their tails) debeaking, the cutting down and extraction of
teeth, the cutting off of toes and ear “notching” (cutting out pieces of the
pig’s ears).

Branding a calf...

The meaning of branding animals

The branding of farmed animals can be traced back to ancient Egypt. Mexican
cattle ranchers were known to mark their cattle with their family coat of
arms. According to the Agricultural History Project, “The reason for
branding is simple: to make it clear who the animal belongs to…” The
branding of human slaves also has a long history. Ancient Romans marked
runaway slaves with the letters FUG (for fugitives). European and American
colonial slave traders branded millions of slaves during the period of
trans-Atlantic enslavement. Southern slave owners often branded slaves’
palms, shoulders, buttocks, or cheeks with a branding iron, giving them
permanent identifying marks should they escape and be caught. Some prisoners
of Auschwitz were tattooed with numbers on their arms. In contemporary
times, certain gangs and other groups brand their members as a rite of
initiation into the group.

International animal liberation movement
269 Life, in fact, makes the act
of branding a central symbol of its fight to end animal oppression. In the
words of founder Sasha Boojor, “It’s a method that humanity invented to take
away an individual’s personality and identity. We believe that animal
activists who willingly subject themselves to branding undermine its
mainstream legitimacy.”

Courtesy of AussieFarms.org

Aside from burning a mark or number into the skin, there are others forms of
identification used on farmed animals today that are equally disturbing. A
recent undercover investigation at an Australian farm exposed female
breeding sows (“baby machines”) with the words “destroy” and “lame, cull”
spray-painted across the sides of their bodies. And while this investigation
may have triggered some outrage, many people who witnessed the footage
likely continued to eat pork products because it is such a widely-accepted
cultural practice. Meat-eating cultures around the world teach us to block
our awareness of the suffering of the animals we consume, to deny the
existence of any problem or victim, to stifle any critical thinking on the
issue.

But putting the powerful influences of culture aside, it’s clear that a
pig suffers just as a dog would under these circumstances. Therefore, If it
is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on a pit bull companion animal,
then it logically follows that it is equally wrong to subject a pig, or any
sentient being for that matter, to the same.

Felicity

Felicity was one of the lucky ones to have encountered people who genuinely
cared about her fate. Her story is a testament to the fact that people care
when they bring themselves to witness the injustice perpetrated against
another and when they can identify themselves as the victim in that context.
In this case, her rescuers, not only acted as individuals to right the wrong
done to her; they actually mobilized a concerted group effort to raise
funds, garner media attention, provide her with costly surgical treatment
and find her a new loving home. And they accomplished all of the above. For
those of us who care and seek to awaken the same caring in others, there is
a valuable lesson to learn from Felicity.

If we want justice for animals, we have to first stop undermining our
efforts by repeating the mantra of failure we inherited from our meat-eating
culture that tells us “people just don’t care.” It’s been used against many
similar efforts to change prejudicial social norms. It only serves to
protect the dominant culture’s oppressive beliefs while stifling efforts for
positive change. In a sense, it has become the activist’s psychological
brand, one that, like Felicity’s, we too must overcome.

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